


See What You See, (See the Truth Of Me)

by 99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Seriously LOTS OF GORE YOU GUYS, This is terrible, why do I do this to the characters I love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 21:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14411100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall/pseuds/99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall
Summary: Orthax always whispered poison from the blackness. In the dark of his own making, the voice of a demon can bring much greater pain.From episode 69, what I think Percy would find, in a prison of his mind.Or in other words, I was picturing this as a comic, but I’m no Draw ™ good. So I wrote down my word pictures instead.





	See What You See, (See the Truth Of Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning! (It’s Percy’s soul being eaten for God’s sakes, of course there’s a trigger warning). For: gore, psychological pain, and if you’re squeamish hearing about other people’s trauma.
> 
> If these things don’t bother you (you watch Hannibal), then you’ll be fine.

He comes awake to the dark and cold, a vault of frosted shadows that yawn in all directions, and he feels no discomfort. It’s less and more than what he looked for, less than he was bracing to find, more than he was expecting to be granted. The nothing of all this is better than he was expecting for himself anyway. It’s not the light and warmth described of heaven, but neither is it the flames and screams of hell.

_Foolish little Percival..._

And it’s a voice that’s prowling around him. It’s lurking just out of sight, beyond his reach, beyond his thought, a thousand miles distant, and yet so close it’s curled up deep inside him.

_Haven’t you learned the truth yet?_

It’s closer, closer but immeasurably farther, and Percy finds that he doesn’t need a body to feel danger. There is no rush of adrenaline anymore, no fervor of blood, no consuming heat to pierce the aching cold, those are bodily things. But the sense of dread, of exposure, of humiliating nakedness needs nothing physical to remain. And he _is_ naked, stripped and revealed, with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. He can’t even move.

_I’m disappointed Percival, really disappointed! I used to think you were so smart...Now I see you were just pretending..._

So far away he can barely sense it, he feels the danger touch him. Cold and insubstantial, tendrils and nothingness, touch without anything there, that slithers up his inner leg. And closer, so much closer, an invasion much more clear, is the cold that expands inside him. The voice that is actually within his brain, where even his mind cannot escape from it.

_I’ll just have to teach you the truth then, Percival._

He’s caught in the grip, and it hurts. Pain like fire. No, like ice. Punishing cold, so intense it burns. He screams with it and writhes, bucking in the frozen grip, head thrown back as the ice sinks knives into his brain.

(Cold can be hell...like the cold of that night...that was hell...)

An image he’s forced to see, sharp but insubstantial, like tissue paper over the eyes of his mind. But he can’t escape it, and the double vision is all too real.

(He was cold, and he was scared, and he felt all the damnation of a soul in hell. They took his family, they took his home. His brother’s bodies are stinking in that cell. His father is dead, and there’s his head up on the castle rampart...doesn’t he look pretty with his eyes ripped out? There’s his mother, her blood soaking into the carpet, her eyes staring lifeless, and he knows there’s nothing behind them, even as he shakes her. And the blood on his hands, even now it’s still warm. Look at Vesper’s broken body, spread on the pavement like a splattered painting. He remembers how crushed she was, the way her brains were smeared across the stones beneath her.)

He screams and struggles. He can feel the cold clutching him now, the way it rakes him in it’s claws. He’s held down, and he can’t escape, forced to bend and yield against the torture. As a sharp pointed pain delicately bites into his eye. Blood rushing from the wound, as his vision is stabbed by claws that pierce his eye until it’s ruined and bloody. And he can’t see, but he can still see, that tissue double vision still assaulting him.

(Did you know how loud you were? Your screams of agony were so fierce, anyone watching could hear them. It was pain felt through the universe. I just couldn’t pass it up, you were deafening my boy, how could I resist the chance to come? And now look at where we are! Even after everything you’ve done, I still have you in the end.)

All he can see is red. Red, and the black shape that towers over him. Blood streaks down the side of his face, from where that one eye is missing, the liquid burning hot but already frozen cold. And outside himself he hears wet slurping, slick and obscene, behind low satisfied growls.

_You taste wonderful my boy...I knew your pain was going to be a treat..._

He can feel more coming, the danger still lurking closer. And he knows, he knows, somehow he _knows_ with absolute certainty, as if he can read his tormenter’s mind, the other eye is next. Like they’re connected, as unable to escape from each other, as if they were the same person.

_Let’s talk more about your family...what about when you left Cassandra behind. Don’t you feel guilty about that? How you must have hurt her..._

_(No.)_

(She screamed for him, like he was the last thing on earth. And he just ran, and listened to her, and it was strange how far away she was. But he could still hear her)

_(No, please.)_

_You dream about it don’t you?_

(He dreams about leaving her. About abandoning her again and again, hearing her scream, and never turning back. Until he wakes up in the dark, cold and shaking, guilt clawing into his chest. Because he can’t change the past, and it’s a thing that haunts him now...)

_(Please, please, I don’t want to think about this.)_

Orthax strokes his face, slow and gentle, and the scorching cold of his touch make him scream. Held down under his demon of torment, forced to lie still and See.

(The past is something that only haunts you. Mistakes you can’t ever change. He can’t change, and there’s nothing left of him but things in the past. He’s already over. The past is all he has left.)

_(No!)_

He writhes out of his captor’s grip, and then sweet freedom as he isn’t held down anymore. The black is insubstantial, but it catches his feet, as he rises, as he runs. The blood pours from his eye, leaving spots on the ground, but he feels and makes his way with the one eye he has left. As he limps away from the lurking torturer.

Then a sudden vertigo, as he’s back where he was before.

_You can’t escape me Percival..._

There was no escape at all. He never even moved, trapped and pinned as he is. And with a rush of horror comes the realization that it was all an illusion, that there was never any freedom at all. Because the torturer is right, there is no escape from a thing inside himself...No, it’s more than that.

_I’m the only one here, Percival...I AM Here!_

There’s no escape from a thing he’s inside of...

The tormenter flips him on his stomach. He’s screaming into the Nothing, into the blackness. As claws rip across his back, cutting down to his spine, his ribs, the cage of bone concealed under flesh. He’s sobbing like a child in the darkness, as cold ice claws snap the fragile thread of his spine. He’s like a broken puppet, being cut from all his strings.

(He’s sobbing into the dirt, into the forest floor. And there’s Cass, with those arrows in her chest, bleeding out just a few feet away. He’s watching her dying, watching her gasp shallow and rabbit fast. Watching her seize and shake, as she flounders in the final struggle with the end. And oh gods, he did this to her. He did this to her, and he’s the one that left her, and now she’s dying alone, unaware that he’s being ripped apart just inches away.)

_So much beautiful pain..._

_(This thing is going to break me)_

And the creature only laughs, listening to his thoughts.

_Break you, Percival?_

He’s trapped in here with it, and not even his mind can escape it. He can feel it pondering him, watching his brain as it spins, and he knows there’s nowhere to hide. It has him spread on the ground now, looking up into it’s face. He feels it stab him in the stomach, and blood surges into his throat cutting off everything but a broken whimper, forced to look up into that empty void of a face.

_You were always a broken thing Percival..._

(He’s watching himself, unleashed and unhinged, the broken and sullied mess of it. As he’s laughing like a mad man on the battlefield, filled with joy at the chaos of death, laughing at the pain. There’s blood sprayed on his face and he’s reveling in it, painted with a lurid crimson stain like smeared lipstick, and he cackles through the scarlet. It’s insanity. He’s insane. He’s a monster.)

Blood splatters across the ground, as the torturer rips him open. He can see the scarlet of his own life force, laid out in neon against the blackness. The bile rises in his throat till he chokes on it. The blood that pumps through his veins is draining into the dark, laying him out sullied, in a warm festering pool of himself.

_You were always a mistake._

(He’s kneeling on the ground, and it’s cold, so cold without her. She’s lying on the stones, but the warmth is gone, the flame of her presence. It’s a shell he holds in his lap and nothing more. And he did this. He killed her. He fucked up, and jumped ahead, and here’s another loved one hurt because of his mistakes. And there are no tears, because he’s screaming inside, as his brain tears itself apart. Because now he’ll never get to tell her, she’s already dead, and it’s too late for him to say how much he loves her.)

_(It’s still too late. I didn’t tell her, and I’ll never get another chance now...)_

He can feel the snap and pull of being torn apart. The tormentor is truly feasting now, picking away pieces of his innards one by one. And he doesn’t know if he’s screaming anymore, if he has enough rebellion left to scream. He’s flayed raw, blood soaked into his hair, nothing more than filth. A heap of blood and aching sinew, a thing that should be long dead, with it’s stomach pulled apart and intestines scattered in the open.

_You were always a pathetic weakling..._

(He looks so young, curled up like that. All those years ago, when Vox Machina was still new to him, when they were strangers that couldn’t possibly comprehend that they’d taken in a broken monster as their friend. Coiled up into a tiny ball on his bed roll, he doesn’t look like much. He’s never looked more like a child, more like the scared, frightened, traumatized teenager he is. Among friends, but too ashamed to reach for them, quietly battling his demons in silence. Hiding under his blanket, smothering his own panicked breathing, caught in the dark tide of his own thoughts, and trying desperately not to cry as the others peacefully sleep.)

There is no screaming left, he doesn’t have the energy as he limply gives in. He can’t escape this, and faced with the truth, he knows he deserves it. So he waits, and he submits. Lying still, forgotten in the dark, as Orthax enjoys his feast, and Percival gets lost in the void.

_You always were a monster, Percival,_ Orthax purrs. _It takes one to know one..._

The words hurt, they ache because they’re true. And what’s the point? Of dignity? Of self respect? The tormenter chuckles, low and fond, as he lets out a sob. One and then another, as they all come out. It hurts, but he can’t stop himself, sniveling like a toddler as he’s torn apart piece by piece. And he doesn’t know the time. He’s blind and deaf, a broken doll being ripped apart. As he’s devoured with almost loving care, choking on blood, and feebly twitching.

The rescue comes, but it’s years in the coming, and there’s an aching void before then. A feast of death that lasts for only moments, that drags on for centuries. And he won’t remember when he wakes up, but the scars are still deep. Visions that come out in dreams, pieces that come back as nightmares, a voice that still whispers like the fractured echo of a sound long silenced. A broken crack across his soul, that Vex discovers with time, where pieces are ripped apart and missing.


End file.
